I'm using this with Catherine. Actually, I've put in on hold until the summer because I have a couple of public school kids who may be taking WT 2 in a sort of co-op type thing in my home with her. Should be fun! I love it so far. It's a classical writing program, based on the progymnasmata, or learning to write by imitation as opposed to the creative writing approach. Kids are given a fable, thouroughly discuss and examine it and then rewrite it. In Writing Tales it goes further because not only do they use the fable as a guide to writing but also for punctuation, spelling and grammar. It's an all-inclusive LA program. I like it because it's open and go. There's little prep. There's lots of discussion, not just worksheets. The exercises are varied enough that Catherine enjoys them better then any writing, spelling or grammar program we've used so far. We were using Aesop Classical Writing but Writing Tales is much easier to implement. We also tried Writing Strands but found it dry in comparison. The best part of Writing Strands, for me, is that it serves as a good intro to more rigourous and classical writing programs like Classical Writing and IEW. The con is that it stops after 2. I'd love to see more Writing Tales for higher grades.
Thanks! I appreciate the input. I'm having a difficult time figuring out my language arts plan next year. This looks promising. She is really struggling with the basic parts of speech. We did Shurley last year and she had it, but apparently forgot it. :? I'm not sure if we should implement some extra grammar with Writing Tales or not. It says it includes grammar. I'm thinking we could use WT1 for 4th grade, then WT2 for 5th and move back into Shurley 6 and Writeshop 1 for 6th grade. Focusing on grammar for 6th and 7th as needed. I'm rambling. I really need to spend time praying about all of it. Thanks for letting me get it out. Patty
The grammar in Writing Tales is clear and helpful so it might be a good match. Another extra thing you could do to reinforce parts of speech is to take a sentence from the fable, maybe one a day, and spend 5 minutes parsing it. You plan for WT sounds good.
How many weeks for a co-op? I'm wondering if I could do 2 different classes next year for this program (1 level 1 and 1 level 2). I like the looks of it and neither one of my kids are big writers. How much do people charge for a co-op class like that?
